Wrap-around article carriers are commonly designed to have ends which are either partially or entirely open. In either case the carriers must be provided with means for securely holding the articles in place. Beverage cans, for example, are held in place partly by the tension of the tightly wrapped carrier and by engagement of the top and bottom flanges of the cans with the edges of cutouts in the side panels of the carrier. That design is facilitated by the fact that the side walls of beverage cans are of substantially constant diameter, which allows the carrier blank to be tightly wrapped around the cans.
Problems arise when the articles are not of uniform dimensions, particularly when the articles are tapered toward the bottom, which causes the bottom portions of articles in adjacent rows to be spaced apart. Wrap-around carriers for use with tapered tubs of the type used as soft food containers are especially troublesome because of the difficulty in wrapping them tightly enough to prevent movement of the tubs when the package is lifted and carried. Movement of the containers is a problem even when the carrier includes side slots through which flanges on the tops of the tubs protrude, since such an arrangement does not hold the bottom portions of the tubs tightly in place. Centrally located bottom panel keels have been provided to engage containers in adjacent rows and prevent the bottom portions of the containers from moving toward each other, but this does not alleviate the problem at the tops of the containers. When a package is picked up by finger holes in the top panel the tendency of the package to bend somewhat at the middle can cause adjacent portions of the top flanges of the containers to overlap. This flange overlapping, known as shingling, allows undesirable relative movement between the containers and can cause the package to deform.
It would be desirable to have a wrap-around carrier which prevents shingling as well as stabilizing the bottoms of the articles, and it is an object of the invention to provide such a carrier.